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TIL that offering a "package deal" for three small websites actually cost me $400 more than bidding them separate
Last Tuesday I bid on three little brochure sites for a real estate guy in Ohio, bundled them at $1,200 thinking I'd save time. Turned out each one needed different plugins, separate hosting setups, and the third one had a weird calendar integration that ate up 10 extra hours. I compared how I usually bid single sites at $600 each (you know, my normal rate) and realized the bundle actually paid me like $30 an hour instead of $50. Has anyone else found that bundling jobs together just makes clients expect a bulk discount without the actual savings?
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the_daniel2mo ago
Man that sounds like a classic "you pay for the lesson" moment right there. Bundles always look good on paper but the reality hits different when you're elbow deep in calendar plugins and separate logins. I once lumped three simple WordPress sites together for a friend's small businesses and ended up spending more time fixing their "quick changes" than I did building the damn things. The math has never worked out for me either, feels like you're paying for the privilege of doing extra work. Unless you're charging triple what you normally would for each site the "discount" just eats your sanity and your hourly rate. Guess some lessons hurt more than others right?
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parker_hall52mo ago
Yeah @the_daniel I had a buddy who did a bundle deal for three local restaurants and ended up redoing their whole menu pages every Tuesday like clockwork. His hourly rate went right out the window, take it from someone who watched it happen from the sidelines.
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